COMING TO AMERICA

Arabic diary found near border

Couple discovers book in backpack dropped on their property

An Arizona couple has discovered a diary written in Arabic in a backpack apparently dropped on their property by an illegal alien entering the U.S., reports the Sierra Vista Herald Review.

According to the report, Walter Kolbe was chasing some wild animals away from his home last week when he stumbled upon the backpack – not an unusual occurrence on his property since it includes a path routinely used by illegal aliens coming from Mexico. He brought it home but did not immediately open it.

After going away for the weekend, Kolbe’s wife, May, looked in the backpack and discovered the diary.

Arabic diary found near border (Courtesy: Herald Review and FreeRepublic.com)

“I found it (the backpack) about a hundred yards from the house, near a barbed-wire fence,” Mr. Kolbe told the Herald Review. “I was just going to throw it in the trash.”

According to Mrs. Kolbe, most of the writing was in Arabic, though there was some Spanish writing in it as well.

Looking through the small book, according to the report, she noticed two names and telephone numbers – one listing in Canada and the other Iran – and confirmed the beginning numbers were the international codes for those two countries.

Mr. Kolbe alerted the FBI, which sent an agent to pick up the diary and backpack on Tuesday.

Kolbe is the brother of Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., in whose congressional district he lives.

The Kolbes said they wonder how many Middle Eastern people are coming into the United States illegally, the Herald Review reported.

Rob Daniels, a spokesman for the U.S. Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector, told the paper he is not allowed to talk about the number of non-Mexicans his agency detains.

“We can’t get into specifics about the number,” Daniels said.

According to the report, a spokesman for the U.S. Border Patrol in Washington, D.C., said 99.4 percent of the 955,310 people apprehended by the agency from Oct. 1, 2001, through Sept. 30, 2002, were from the Americas, which includes Canada, Mexico and other Central and South American nations. The remainder comes from 140 countries.

“Because of 9-11 there has been restrictions and guidelines when talking about special-interest countries,” the spokesman told the paper.

The decision not to be specific about how many people come from the Middle East is a directive of the Joint Terrorism Task Force, he said.

As WorldNetDaily reported in 2001, there have been increasing numbers of Arabs coming into the U.S. via Mexico. Border Patrol spokesperson Rene Noriega told WND that the number of other-than-Mexican detentions has grown by 42 percent. Most of the non-Mexican migrants are from El Salvador and other parts of Central America, she said, but added that agents have picked up people from all over the world, including the former Soviet Union, Asia and the Middle East.

According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, hours after the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, an anonymous caller led Mexican immigration agents to 41 undocumented Iraqis waiting to cross into the United States.

This afternoon, reports the Associated Press, Mexican authorities detained six Iraqi citizens who they believe intended to cross into the United States from Tijuana.

The five men and one woman claimed to be German citizens when they arrived at the Tijuana airport Tuesday night on a flight from Mexico City.

Immigration authorities sent the Iraqis back to Mexico City for questioning, according to the AP report.